Polar bear shot while clim­bing through a win­dow into a hut

On March 24, a polar bear was shot while it tried to enter a hut through the win­dow. The hut was used by a cou­ple from Lon­gye­ar­by­en, who tried to sca­re the bear away with noi­se and by thro­wing items at it. When this tur­ned out to be unsuc­cessful, the bear was shot at short distance with a revol­ver.

The inci­dence hap­pen­ed in Hyt­te­vi­ka, an old trapper’s hut on the west coast north of Horn­sund. The cou­ple went the­re from Lon­gye­ar­by­en by snow mobi­le for the weekend. Both are con­side­red local­ly very expe­ri­en­ced out­door per­sons.

The case is rou­ti­ne­ly inves­ti­ga­ted by the local poli­ce (Sys­sel­man­nen). Polar bears are com­ple­te­ly pro­tec­ted in Spits­ber­gen and may only be shot in self defence. The aut­ho­ri­ties have alre­a­dy made known that the cir­cum­s­tances seem to indi­ca­te a case of legal self defence.

The case recei­ved some cri­ti­cism during the fol­lo­wing deba­te regar­ding the poten­ti­al use of pep­per spray, which is often used for exam­p­le in North Ame­ri­ca to sol­ve simi­lar con­flicts wit­hout loss of human or ani­mal life. In Spits­ber­gen, howe­ver, the local aut­ho­ri­ties have offi­ci­al­ly declared that they do not sup­port the use of pep­per spray for self defence against polar bears. The owner of this web­site and cur­rent aut­hor means that pep­per­spray is cer­tain­ly not sui­ta­ble for stop­ping a bear that it vigo­rous­ly attack­ing in open ter­rain, but may well be used suc­cessful­ly from the rela­ti­ve safe­ty of a hut or even a tent to save the lives of bears and humans ali­ke. A bear thus scared away is unli­kely to go near a hut again.

This was the first case of a polar bear being shot sin­ce the lethal attack in Tem­pel­fjord in August 2011.

Source: Sval­bard­pos­ten

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